Hello, I am new to pretty much all of this, and tried installing everything on my own, ran into a problem, uninstalled everything and installed xampp, and am still having the same problem! When i try to run phpMyAdmin, i get the error message:
cannot load mysql extension,
please check PHP Configuration

Also, when i click status, it tells me the only thing working is HTTPS (SSL) and FTP service. Everything else shows disabled, even though the mySQL service is running (in services.msc and the process manager), and php scripts seem to work ok. Also, none of the demos work. Somehow my mysql extension isnt loaded, but i thought that came standard with this release? Any help AT ALL would be extremely appriciated, i've been pulling my hair out for 2 days, reading every manual and troubleshooting advice i could find, but nothing works. I imagine its something simple, i just cant figure it out. Anyway, thanks!